In any online game where there is player interaction, there will always be people trying to take advantage of others in various ways. Some of these ways may include trying various tactics to steal passwords, taking items from other players in a manner not agreed upon, or being verbally abusive. In June 2004, RuneScape created a way to help take care of some of the problems which were occurring.

2.0 - What is a Player Moderator?

What was the way to help take care of these problems? Player Moderators. A player moderator (usually called PMod or player mod) is a regular player of RuneScape who has the ability to send priority abuse reports and if the abusive player is being particularly bad, the player mod has the ability to mute the player temporarily. Jagex does check all reports that player mods send in to make sure player mods are not abusing their powers.

3.0 - Who is a Player Moderator?

How can you tell a player mod apart from another player? The player mod has a small silver crown next to their name. This crown was put in to make sure that it would be impossible to have a player impersonate a player mod since they would not have the crown. Jagex staff have a similar feature to differentiate themselves from normal players. Jagex staff have a gold crown next to their name. Player mods are not Jagex staff since they have different crowns. The crown appears in private messages and in the normal text area below the main game play screen.

4.0 - Choosing Player Moderators

How Jagex chooses player mods is rather obscure. They say on the official site that they do not pick those who ask customer support to become player mods. The only real hints they give on who they pick, are people who are nice honest players, who report abuse they see, using the report abuse button but not abusing the report abuse button. They also say that posting helpful posts on the official forum might help the powers that be choose you. If you are invited by Jagex to become a player mod, you will have a message in your message center (on RuneScape.com). Jagex will NOT email you or ask you in game to become a player mod.